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Mary Robinson Doesn’t Need to Be Popular

In your memoir, “Everybody Matters,” you write that you were the third child amid four boys. Do you think having so many brothers affected your political path? I do joke that this is the start of my belief in human rights and using my elbows. But more seriously, I had a stronger sense of myself as a young Irishwoman than many of my contemporaries. When I was elected president of Ireland in 1990, I was very conscious that I could use symbols in a way that would be harder, maybe, for a man. In my inauguration, I emphasized the word “love,” which is somehow easier for a woman to use.

Did you ever compare your style of leadership with Margaret Thatcher’s, considering her prominence in the region? Of course, I was a nonexecutive president, but her vision was to be better at leading in the way of a man than men were. She was hierarchical, she was tough, whereas I have a very strong view that we must lead differently and be more of a listening leadership to develop consensus.

Before you became president, London’s Sunday Times described your husband, Nick, as “solid, domesticated, willing to shop for clothes with her and to choose the curtain material.” Was that description accurate? He’s definitely the shopper in the family, not me. He’s got a very good sense of design and color and enjoys it. But he’s not domesticated in a placid sense, nor is he a perfect husband. He can be quite untidy. More than anything, he is the friend who became the lover, and 42 years later, I’m not complaining.

When you left the presidency in 1997, your approval ratings couldn’t have been much higher. Was it difficult when your five-year term as United Nations high commissioner for human rights made you a polarizing figure? When I took the job of high commissioner, a poet friend of mine, Eavan Boland, said, “Remember, Mary, if you become popular in that job, you’re probably not doing a good job.”

Photo

Mary RobinsonCredit
Deirdre Brennan for The New York Times

Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League have harshly criticized your management of 2001’s World Conference Against Racism, in Durban, South Africa, in large part because anti-Semitic language was present in preliminary drafts of the conference resolution. It was terrible that it was a regional conference in Iran, of all countries, where the anti-Semitic language was put in. I probably underestimated how hurtful that was. But I knew that language was not going to be agreed upon.

But isn’t it sort of rich that any U.N. event concerning racism would be held in Tehran, considering the country’s president suggested that Israel should be wiped from the map? Not all countries wanted to have regional conferences on racism. India didn’t want to; China didn’t want to. It wasn’t like a World Cup or something.

Reading your account of how excruciatingly difficult it is to get anything done at the U.N., I can understand why so many people have no use for it. I think about the U.N. the way that Winston Churchill thought about democracy, which he described as the worst system except for all the others. The U.N. does have real problems, but I am still very loyal to it. It’s the political U.N. that is shameful — at the moment, it’s absolutely disgusting that the Security Council cannot agree on Syria, and people are being slaughtered every day.

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In 2009, Paul Krugman published a Times column titled “Erin Go Broke,” criticizing Ireland’s failure to regulate its banking industry. Did you agree with the Irish commentators who felt it was unfair? Not at all. The Celtic tiger ultimately was a huge foolishness. The banks borrowed and lent money irresponsibly, and the developers developed irresponsibly. It’s quite fair to heavily criticize the lack of political oversight.

In Ireland, are there feelings that some bankers should be in jail, as there are here? If you come over to Ireland, that’s what taxi drivers will say to you.

Do you agree? I always listen to taxi drivers.

INTERVIEW HAS BEEN CONDENSED AND EDITED.

A version of this interview appears in print on March 24, 2013, on Page MM12 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: ‘If You Become Popular in That Job, You’re Probably Not Doing a Good Job’. Today's Paper|Subscribe